How to Search Court Records in New Brunswick

New Brunswick's free New Brunswick Court Index lets anyone search civil, small claims, bankruptcy, and probate case files online by name, but criminal and family cases are excluded from that search, and every actual file still has to be requested from the specific court office where it is physically held.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

New Brunswick's Courts

New Brunswick's courts are the Court of Appeal of New Brunswick (Registrar's Office in Fredericton), the Court of King's Bench of New Brunswick, with a Trial Division and a Family Division, the Provincial Court of New Brunswick, the Probate Court of New Brunswick, and the Small Claims Court of New Brunswick. The King's Bench name reflects a 2023 rename from Queen's Bench, and King's Bench (Trial and Family Divisions) and Provincial Court operate out of shared regional courthouse locations across the province's judicial districts.

The New Brunswick Court Index: What You Can Search Online for Free

New Brunswick runs the most substantial online search tool found anywhere in Atlantic Canada: the New Brunswick Court Index, a free public self-serve search at www1.gnb.ca/nota. No login or payment is required to use the search form. It covers six case types, Cause, Matter, Probate, Rule 80, Bankruptcy, and Small Claims, and can be filtered by eight regional court offices: Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton, Woodstock, Edmundston, Campbellton, Bathurst, and Miramichi.

The tool's own page states that its case-type coverage took effect "with effect from February 28, 2010," covering all civil cases and judgments, all Small Claims cases, all Bankruptcy cases, and all Probate cases. A search-form note elsewhere on the same page instead excludes files "older than March 1st, 2010," a one-day discrepancy in the government's own page text that this article records rather than tries to resolve. Either way, the Court Index's coverage starts at roughly 2010, not earlier.

The Court Index returns only basic information: participants, the case location, and courthouse contact details, not document images or the full contents of a file. To actually view a file, a requester still needs to go through the Access to Court Records request process described below.

One documented gap: a probate application filed in Charlotte County will not show up in Court Index search results at all. The tool's own page directs those searches to a named contact by phone instead. Whether other counties have similar undisclosed carve-outs was not checked for this article.

What the Court Index Does Not Cover

Criminal and family-law cases are not searchable through the Court Index. This is consistent both with the Access to Court Records guideline, which states that court staff do not conduct topical or litigation searches, and with the Court Index's own stated case-type scope of civil, small claims, bankruptcy, and probate only. This is a real and useful search tool, but it is scoped away from exactly the case types with the highest privacy sensitivity, and a reader looking for a criminal or family file will not find it there.

Court Dockets

Court dockets for the Provincial Court and the Court of King's Bench are posted online at the Courts of New Brunswick website, and lists of cases and motions scheduled at the Court of Appeal can be found there too. This is broader online docket coverage than some neighbouring Atlantic provinces provide.

New Brunswick's Access to Court Records Guideline

Unlike some neighbouring provinces, which fold court-records access into their general Rules of Court, New Brunswick publishes a dedicated 52-page guideline, "Access to Court Records," dated July 2026. It grounds the open-court principle in the Supreme Court of Canada's reasoning in Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25, and in Attorney General of Nova Scotia v. MacIntyre, 1982, which the guideline quotes for the proposition that the presumption favours public access and the burden of proof lies on whoever wants to deny it.

The guideline is explicit that there is no central repository of New Brunswick court records: a request must go to the specific court office where the file is physically held. Telephone requests are limited to a next-appearance date, the nature of the next appearance, and the date or general nature of charges or a sentence, not full lists of information, and youth matters are categorically excluded from telephone requests altogether; a youth-matter request has to be made in person. Court staff explicitly do not conduct broad topical or litigation searches on a requester's behalf, which is why the Court Index above, not a staff-run search, is the only self-serve option that exists.

For records from a concluded proceeding, or whenever court staff directs, an Access to Court Records Request Form is required. Staff screen the file first to withhold non-public material; if judicial direction is needed, the presiding judge, or the Chief Justice, Chief Judge, or a designate if the judge is unavailable, decides, and a denial at that stage can be escalated to a formal court application under the Rules of Court or the Rules of Provincial Court Practice.

The guideline also puts a specific burden on the requester. It warns that there are numerous instances of multiple case files existing under the same name, and that liability for misidentifying someone from a court record rests with the person obtaining or using the information, not with the court.

Fees for Copies, Searches, and Transcripts

Every fee below traces to a named regulation or Rule of Court, a stronger sourcing footing than a plain fee-table PDF with no cited authority.

The fee schedule also lists a $20.00 figure attached to copies of evidence recordings, for both Provincial Court and King's Bench, but the specific line it applies to could not be cleanly isolated from the source document reviewed for this article. Confirm the exact fee for a recording copy directly with the court registry.

Some categories are exempt from these fees entirely: Crown or Attorney General agents, the RCMP, Police Act police, statutory enforcement officers, and legal-aid-funded parties to the specific proceeding at Provincial Court; Attorney General agents, legal-aid-funded parties, and the Public Trustee at King's Bench and the Court of Appeal; and Attorney General agents and the Public Trustee at Small Claims Court.

Fee Waivers in Family Matters

King's Bench Family Division has its own waiver route. The Registrar can waive the photocopying and search fees when a solicitor certifies, by a Certificate of Solicitor filed with the petition or answer, that the party's legal fees are unpaid or unpayable and hardship would result, or when the party receives Family Income Security Act assistance, which also extends the waiver to sheriff fees.

Transcripts

Transcripts cost $4.00 per page at both Provincial Court and King's Bench, with an electronic copy at $10.00, and require a Transcript Order Form. Turnaround runs 30 to 180 days, and the public or media must pay a 70 percent deposit before preparation starts, refundable if it overshoots the final cost. Transcripts are barred entirely for sealed or confidential matters without a court order, and a requester remains legally responsible for knowing and complying with any publication ban attached to the transcript's content, for example a bail-hearing or preliminary-inquiry transcript.

Restrictions on Access

• Youth records. Youth Criminal Justice Act section 119 is the controlling federal access restriction, cited by name in the guideline. Sections 110(1) and 111(1) impose mandatory publication bans, on information identifying a young person dealt with under the Act and on information identifying a young witness or victim, that apply without a court order. New Brunswick's own Provincial Offences Procedure for Young Persons Act section 26 creates a parallel provincial identification-publication ban.
• Sexual-offence complainant records. Criminal Code sections 276.03, 276.07, and 276.11 restrict publication in connection with rape shield applications.
• Preliminary inquiries and jury-absent proceedings. Criminal Code section 542(2) covers admissions at a preliminary inquiry, and section 648(1) covers any part of a trial held without the jury present, both automatic statutory publication restrictions.
• Bail records. Criminal Code section 517(1) makes a publication ban on bail-hearing evidence and reasons mandatory if the accused applies for it, but only discretionary if the Crown requests it instead. Section 539(1) sets the same request-source-dependent pattern for preliminary-inquiry publication bans.
• Discretionary orders generally. Courts apply the Sherman Estate v. Donovan test.
• A publication ban is not an access ban. The guideline states plainly that a publication ban prohibits the dissemination of the information, but the court record is still accessible to the public. Access and publication restrictions are treated as legally distinct throughout the guideline, and the burden of knowing about and complying with a ban falls on whoever accessed the record.
• Family matters. Distinct fee-waiver rules exist, described above; the guideline's chapter addressing substantive family-record access restrictions in more detail was not reviewed for this article. Anyone with a family-law matter, including a New Brunswick divorce, should confirm current rules directly with King's Bench Family Division registry staff.

Court Records Are Not a Criminal Record Check

Using the Court Index or requesting a court file to check a civil judgment or criminal case history is not the same thing as getting a police-issued criminal record check; neither will hand you the document an employer or landlord typically wants. Background screening for employment purposes runs through a police service or an accredited screening company, not a court registry search.

Related New Brunswick Resources

For filing a claim rather than searching for a record, see how to file a small claim in Canada. For birth, death, and marriage certificates, see vital records in New Brunswick. For how neighbouring Nova Scotia compares, including its partial docket postings and lack of any case-file search, see court records in Nova Scotia. For the full provincial rundown, see the Canada court records hub.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. New Brunswick's court access policies and fees can change, and this page could not confirm the exact fee amount attached to copies of evidence recordings, or whether counties besides Charlotte County have undisclosed Court Index gaps. Confirm those directly with the specific court registry. A publication ban restricts what may be disseminated about a court record, not whether the record can be accessed, and the person who obtains a record is responsible for knowing and complying with any ban that applies to it. Confirm current requirements, forms, and fees with the Courts of New Brunswick or the Access to Court Records guideline before relying on this article.